Palestinians mourn the ‘Catastrophe’

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Ramallah President Bush hailed Israelis as “the chosen people” during the Jewish state’s 60th anniversary yesterday as thousands of Palestinians rallied in the West Bank and Gaza Strip to mark what they call the Naqba or Catastrophe that saw their predecessors dispossessed from their lands.

In Ramallah and other Palestinian cities that are home to the descendants of hundreds of thousands of Arabs displaced in the war that began on May 15, 1948, when the British Mandate in Palestine expired, sirens blared, youths marched in protest and large crowds observed a minute’s silence.